Francis Asbury was born in August 1745 at Great Barr, about four miles outside of Birmingham, England, to Joseph and Elizabeth Asbury. Joseph was a gardener and Francis attended common school until ...
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Francis Asbury was born in August 1745 at Great Barr, about four miles outside of Birmingham, England, to Joseph and Elizabeth Asbury. Joseph was a gardener and Francis attended common school until about age thirteen. At fourteen he became an apprentice to a local metalworker as part of the Birmingham area’s booming metalworking industry, a key component in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Elizabeth Asbury sank into a deep depression following the death of Sarah Asbury, Francis’s only sibling, at age six in 1749. Elizabeth eventually found solace in Methodism and directed her son to Methodist meetings, where he experienced conversion and then sanctification by age sixteen.Less

The Apprentice

John Wigger

Published in print: 2009-12-01

Francis Asbury was born in August 1745 at Great Barr, about four miles outside of Birmingham, England, to Joseph and Elizabeth Asbury. Joseph was a gardener and Francis attended common school until about age thirteen. At fourteen he became an apprentice to a local metalworker as part of the Birmingham area’s booming metalworking industry, a key component in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Elizabeth Asbury sank into a deep depression following the death of Sarah Asbury, Francis’s only sibling, at age six in 1749. Elizabeth eventually found solace in Methodism and directed her son to Methodist meetings, where he experienced conversion and then sanctification by age sixteen.

This chapter discusses the rise of Lacouturisme in the United States during the industrial era. It explains how Onésime Lacouture's ascetic, mystical antimodernism found a receptive audience among ...
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This chapter discusses the rise of Lacouturisme in the United States during the industrial era. It explains how Onésime Lacouture's ascetic, mystical antimodernism found a receptive audience among enthusiastic vowed religious in America. It examines Lacouturisme's muscular Catholic critique of the fundamental underpinnings of American culture and how radicalized, proletarian-minded clergy filled the vacuum created by the rise of industrial mechanization and attendant consolidation of wealth in the United States at the turn of the century. It also considers the Second Industrial Revolution during the Gilded Age that led to the presupposition that progress was inevitable; how the “myth of progress” opened up avenues for asserting a measure of Catholic exceptionalism; the U.S. bishops' self-organization and formal engagement with the “Social Question”; the American hierarchy's support for organized labor; and institutional Catholicism's role in American socio-economic criticism.Less

Mackerel Snappers in the US Industrial Era

Jack Lee Downey

Published in print: 2015-06-01

This chapter discusses the rise of Lacouturisme in the United States during the industrial era. It explains how Onésime Lacouture's ascetic, mystical antimodernism found a receptive audience among enthusiastic vowed religious in America. It examines Lacouturisme's muscular Catholic critique of the fundamental underpinnings of American culture and how radicalized, proletarian-minded clergy filled the vacuum created by the rise of industrial mechanization and attendant consolidation of wealth in the United States at the turn of the century. It also considers the Second Industrial Revolution during the Gilded Age that led to the presupposition that progress was inevitable; how the “myth of progress” opened up avenues for asserting a measure of Catholic exceptionalism; the U.S. bishops' self-organization and formal engagement with the “Social Question”; the American hierarchy's support for organized labor; and institutional Catholicism's role in American socio-economic criticism.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between Anglicanism and Methodism. Revising the view that Methodism was an ever-separating movement, this chapter contends that the eighteenth-century ...
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This chapter examines the complex relationship between Anglicanism and Methodism. Revising the view that Methodism was an ever-separating movement, this chapter contends that the eighteenth-century Church of England was a varied body, with myriad challenges which it confronted through the maintenance of a pastoral ideal, lived out ‘on the ground’ by the parish clergy. The industrializing parish of Madeley, Shropshire (where the incumbent from 1760 to 1785 was the Revd John William Fletcher), is used as a case study. Together with Madeley, other examples of dutiful and evangelically minded clergy who utilized the experimental religion and religious irregularities often associated with Methodists or Dissenters, are surveyed. The chapter concludes that Fletcher and many evangelically minded Anglican-Methodist clergy found the Church of England sufficiently strong and flexible enough to do the work of the Church rigorously and creatively, and that Methodism could serve as a means of Anglican pastoral success.Less

Anglicanism and Methodism

David R. Wilson

Published in print: 2017-10-05

This chapter examines the complex relationship between Anglicanism and Methodism. Revising the view that Methodism was an ever-separating movement, this chapter contends that the eighteenth-century Church of England was a varied body, with myriad challenges which it confronted through the maintenance of a pastoral ideal, lived out ‘on the ground’ by the parish clergy. The industrializing parish of Madeley, Shropshire (where the incumbent from 1760 to 1785 was the Revd John William Fletcher), is used as a case study. Together with Madeley, other examples of dutiful and evangelically minded clergy who utilized the experimental religion and religious irregularities often associated with Methodists or Dissenters, are surveyed. The chapter concludes that Fletcher and many evangelically minded Anglican-Methodist clergy found the Church of England sufficiently strong and flexible enough to do the work of the Church rigorously and creatively, and that Methodism could serve as a means of Anglican pastoral success.